Horizontal ICT policy issues

Horizontal ICT policies impact both supply side and demand side ICT policy as they set the framework for demand (adoption) and supply (deployment) side market conditions. Some key horizontal ICT policy issues are: internet governance, trade policies, intellectual property rights, and critical infrastructure and cybersecurity.

Internet governance

Internet governance concerns rules and principles for the operation and use of the internet. The scope is to define participating stakeholders, how to make collective decisions and to define the scope of the governance framework.

Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)

IPR is an umbrella term including trademarks, patents and copyrights. This body aims to protect private interest and drive future innovation. It aims to increase incentives to invest in new knowledge creation and innovations on one side, and on the other, stimulate the diffusion of new knowledge and innovation. For example, fostering positive spillovers for greater societal benefit, thereby limiting private interest to an appropriate portion of the value attached to intellectual property investments.

Trade policies

These policies aim to create predictable international trade rules for goods, services, IPR and data between countries and regions. Open, clear and predictable trade policies enable international trade growth and economic integration, resulting in economic benefits, more social and cultural integration, and the transfer of technologies and innovations.

Critical infrastructure and cyber security

Critical infrastructure refers to any infrastructure vital for the functioning of modern societies, such as electricity, water, road, ICT and etc. The policy aim is to take extra security measures – physical, logical, procedural, and redundancy – to assure continued availability and integrity. Cyber security is a much broader term that includes considerations covered by critical infrastructure, as well as additional considerations such as offensive and defensive measures to protect against and resist cyber-attacks targeted at any level: network, IT-infrastructure, software, device, and user.